As a motorcyclist...
...somet' like this happens every winter. Here's 2 of them.

1. tl;dr: got cut up on an A road. Brain saves the day.
Travelling around my town's bypass (I live on the opposite side to the city where I work) on the way home I reached the super dodgy junction where a 60 zone tees with another 60 zone but there's a 90 degree bend (blind but you can take it at 60) so cars on the joining road can't see that they're approaching a junction until they're 100yds from it. This leads to a lot of cars overshooting the junction and stopping in the road. I expect this to happen and I always spot potential numpties, albeit with a high false-positive rate.
This time the car overshot the junction when I was less than 100yds away. I'd seen it coming and hit the brakes before it even got into my path but the onboard fogey had timed it perfectly so that I had the minimum possible braking distance. The car stopped halfway out into the road so not completely blocking it but just far enough so that I was heading straight for the tip of their right front wing, I was about 40ft from it at this point. Fortunately, I subconsciously realised that a. I couldn't stop before hitting the car and b. that half the road was still available; without thinking about it I let off the brakes about 20ft from the car and swerved around it, missing by a few inches.
Danger passed, I checked my speedo; after dropping the anchors I was still doing 40mph. If I'd clipped the car bumper I'd've lost my left foot and hitting it straight on would've at least put me in hospital.
I was tense for about 36 hours after that one.
This was my 2nd and worst near miss at that junction.


2. tl;dr: an actual prang but fortuitous bodily arrangement prevents serious injury.
Eventually, my high false-positive rate on numpty spotting caught up with me. Again, on the way home, I approach a T junction (this time in town) on a busy road where there's often a queue both to get into and out of it. People often zoom through minute gaps in the traffic at this junction but that's not a problem as they can actually gauge the gaps well. The prang began with a pair of drivers NOT zooming though a fairly large gap in the traffic...
As I approached the junction, there was the usual cars waiting both to get in and out of it but, cryptically, neither car was moving even though the gap in front of me was big enough for 1 and probably both of them to turn. Perplexed by this, I noticed one of them inch forward, and then the other... then I realised they were having a Mexican Standoff at the junction. This is the perfect situation for them to misjudge the approaching traffic as both drivers are paying more attention to each other than anything else. Expecting that one of them would cut me up as I approached, I decided to near-stop (slowing to a walking pace, actually stopping and setting off on a bike is hard work) and let them both make the turn, thus defusing the situation. The car behind me worked this out when he was about 10ft away from me.
All I heard was 'screeeDOOFeeeeeeeech' as the car locked up before shunting me and then actually coming to a stop. The entire force of the impact was transmitted through my arse, later leaving me with a rather sore bruise in my arsecrack.
Usually, when a bike gets shunted, the bike is knocked out from under the rider and you get slammed onto the bonnet of the car. Not this time. The impact to my arse bent me double and flung my legs out infront of me, my right foot hooked under the right grip and I was yanked along by the bike, springing me back into shape. All this happened while the bike and me were airborne. The bike landed back on its wheels, still upright, and a split second later I landed on it laid flat out on my back. The bike rolled along for a moment and I thought "I can save it", except as my internal monologue got to 'save', the bike tipped over onto its right side and scraped along the ground, dragging me down with it as my foot was still hooked under the bars. The bike scraped to a halt and I slid off it onto the ground.
My first thought was to turn off the ignition so I sat up to do this. Then, I noticed that my right leg wasn't going anywhere; it was no clamped between the right grip, the road and the side of my bike which conveniently formed a triangle that was almost as big as the cross section of my leg. Almost. The guy who hit me and the 2 drivers that I thought were going to cut me up leapt from their cars and lifted the bike off me, presumably expecting me to come apart like a Crash Dummies doll. I don't know if seeing me get up straight away and hobble to the side of the road was a relief or a disappointment.
On the plus side, the guy that hit me had insurance and was super apologetic, he was also surprised as fuck by the V-shaped dent that a 400lb bike had left in the front of his car. For bonus points, because I'd landed back on the bike my gear didn't have a mark on it, except a small scuff where my leg had been clamped. On the minus side, my entire right leg was sprained, weird bruises appeared on my shin and I got mild whiplash in the entire bottom half of my spine. I still get more back pain than I had before but it's tolerable. The bike was a cat. C write off but the payout was a few hundred quid more than it cost me to fix it.

To round it off, I had another near miss at the junction from story 1 while riding the courtesy bike from the insurance, involving the exact near miss that I was trying to avoid when I had story 2. That being the 3rd near miss I've had at that junction in 4 years, I've actually changed my route home to avoid it.

Usually, I have a near miss every winter. I don't wear a Leatt brace 'cos I think it looks cool.

Other minor two-wheeled lucky escapes: doing a small powerslide off a roundabout when I opened the throttle too early and, on a different occasion, doing a rolling burnout instead of accelerating away from a different roundabout.




Length? Bitches don't know 'bout it.
(squigbobble existed, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 13:40, 10 replies)

You should be more careful.
Maybe take the bus?
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 13:51, closed)

Cost
Takes twice as long, costs 4x as much as petrol for the bike.
(squigbobble existed, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 14:02, closed)

You make a good case.
I regret not taking my CBT.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 14:11, closed)

If...
...you have all your limbs and the rest of you works well enough to drive, you still can.
(squigbobble existed, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 14:35, closed)

It's in my list of "things I'd really like to do but will probably never get round to".
Probably have to make do with one of those mopeds with the extra wheel at the front.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 15:46, closed)

I can see the appeal of those, they probably
are more stable, but for some reason they seem to bring out the worst in their riders.

Riding in town, when one of them comes up behind you, you simply *know* it's going to do something stupid. My theory is it's some kind of "Yes, I know I look like a prat on this, but look how fast I can go" thing.

I love biking. As a daily commuter into London, here's how I see it;

Upsides;

- You're guaranteed a seat.
- You can choose when to leave home / office. None of this 'If I'm not out by 07:15, I have to stand up all the way'.
- I can cut through traffic, use bus lanes, not pay congestion charges or parking charges.
- If you don't get competitive (and a lot of people do), there is no stress. I ride at my own pace, very little holds me up, I know I'm getting home in half the time I would on the train or in a car, and even the biggest disaster won't slow me down much.
- trains can be delayed/ cancelled. Cars can get gridlocked. Bikes just keep on rolling.
- You get to look at the arses of lady cyclists.

Downsides?

- Rain. Even the best waterproofs won't keep it all out. I reckon 20 minutes is about as much as mine will take if it's really pissing down.

Do it!
(username failed moderation, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 17:08, closed)

This is all sounds advice.
Those three wheel things are ridiculous, however, and I wouldn't be caught dead on one.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 20:49, closed)

Can you hurry up and die, please.
Many far less dull people are waiting for your organs.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 13:53, closed)

Patience :P
At least I put the tl;drs before the long winded bits :D
(squigbobble existed, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 14:03, closed)

raaaaaaaand the raaaandbaaaaat
dropped a cog gave it some handle doing about 150,000 miles an hour
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 15:03, closed)

Going
so fast we went through a time warp back to the Cro-Magnon era.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Fri 5 Jul 2013, 18:30, closed)

Well written and useful, they do say it takes two years of riding to develop the sixth sense to slow down or move with no conscious knowledge of why only to realise afterwards but avoiding dodgy spots sounds even better.
(Benzyl, Sat 6 Jul 2013, 14:26, closed)

I've got about 40k miles on 2 wheels.
Spread out over 6 years. Would have more but keep getting iced in or my last functioning bike breaks down. I've really got to pull my finger out and fix one of the other ones...


"Well written." Not many people say that about my writing, lol.


As for the si(x)th sense, I actually have almost no recollection of one of my other near misses which happened about half a mile from near miss 1. I remember the car starting to pull out then my memory blanks up to the point where the danger had passed (when the car had got out of the way and I was virtually at a standstill about 4ft short of the junction) apart from one thing- the amount of pressure I was using on the front brake. That's the only thing that got filed away by my brain.
For all my near misses, the duration between dropping the anchors and (so far) not hitting the div that's cut me up has been less than 2 seconds.

I hope that, if I finally get taken out, it's by a mid-sized SUV as the height is about right for me to fly in through the driver's side window and take the driver out as well. Preferably an X5 'cos everybody hates BMW drivers.
(squigbobble existed, Mon 8 Jul 2013, 13:31, closed)